10/2/07

One concept which makes quite a bit of sense to the Monetizer is taking whatever earnings you get from any online venture, and putting that money back into ways to help you make even more money. It's one of the key aspects of any successful business; reinvest profits to make the business grow even more.

$100 is the lowest amount you need to earn on Google's Adsense program to get payed. For AuctionAds it is $50 (they are giving you a head start halfway there with $25 in any new account). A social media site like Gather offers you the potential to earn $50 and more, and Cash Crate offers you a minimum $10 payout for a month. Here's some ways you can take $100 or less and reinvest it to help promote and grow your blog/business. These ideas relate to buying yourself more exposure and advertising, or improving your blog/site, which in turn can attract more visitors and subscribers.

1) $100 plan - Buy a Million Dollar Wiki or Euro page - Million Dollar Wiki has already sold 1012 pages on its newer site. It offers you a free page about a "word" or topic, similar to Wikipedia. While this is a paid form of internet real estate, it provides yet another way to promote your blog/topic. There's also several ways to profit from the $100 investment. You can use it to pitch/promote affiliate products and get referrals. You can run Google Adsense on your page. In addition, you could set it up where you are charging people $5 or more to have a link on your page (if their blog or site relates to your topic) as advertising. Furthermore, you could "flip" the page should it become hot or extremely popular, sell it to a new owner for a tidy sum, giving you more money. There's also the newer knock off European version, The Million Euro Wiki. Both Wiki sites claim they will have a good amount of traffic and search engine love. Million Euro Wiki has sold 25 pages so far, and for every 25 pages sold they are awarding a brand new 16 GB iPOD Touch! 2) $75 - 50 plans - Buy a new logo/banner design or webhosting - For both of these ideas, you'll have to shop around a bit to find the features and deal that works for you. First, you could look for an online service that designs professional and stylish looking banners, which could add to the style and look of your blog/site. Here's an example of just one site, Bannermode.com that charges $14 and up for banners. Of course the flipside is having a friend who's skilled in art programs like Photoshop or Paintshop, or being a do-it-yourselfer. The other alternative, is to move your blog to webhosting and start to build a product/brand out of it. $50 to $75 will usually get that off the ground, giving you the ability to purchase a year's worth of hosting and a domain (a place like GoDaddy offers $3.99 plans and up, and you can pay up front). You may choose to make this serious investment into creating a blog which is basically your own website and product. But of course you could just plunk alot of money into the below ideas...

3)$25 plan - Buy a Text Link Ads campaign - This paid advertising allows you to shop your blog around for places to advertise. Text Link Ads provides a targeted form of traffic to your site or blog, where you choose from the categories and then sites on which you'd like your blog link advertised. What's best about this, is the fact that right now, $25 will get you $100 more in advertising links as part of a promotion Text Link Ads has. A pretty smart investment, as they also say having these links on high ranking sites will improve your blog or website's search engine rankings too. Check out more on Text Link Ads.

4) $10 or $5 plan - StumbleUpon campaign or domain name - It might not seem like much, but even with that low amount, you can buy a StumbleUpon advertising campaign. Set up link advertising with the popular social media site here. For as little as $5 you can bring in 100 new visitors and potential subscribers. Make sure the link you choose to advertise is bringing them to your strongest content or best written piece, to potentially catch their attention and loyalty. $10 can also purchase you your site's domain name for 1 year (minus a place to host it). Do a search for "best web hosting" and start researching your best options. Narrow it down to 3 choices, even check other sites/blogs you like and see if they mention who they use. Host Gator is one that many site owners seem to love. It's advisable to get your domain and hosted site as soon as possible, so you can establish links and ranking much better. The choice to start hosting your own domain for your blog would by far be the best first early investment and then you can work more with advertising it.

If you want to work towards making a good amount of money online then using the money you earn now can go farther in making even more. Spending $5 and up on your blog is never a bad investment, if done right. Always consider the "risk-reward" factor in doing so. Give some of these above ideas a try after you've earned a bit of money on your blog or site and see if you can't increase or double your profits..If you research and investigate and take calculated risks you could be closer to building a successful online venture.